Mission Style Coffee Table

The Morris Chairs were a little bit upset they had to share the room with a 10 year old Ikea glass top coffee table so I built this one to make the room a little more harmonious. It is made from solid quartersawn white oak and built entirely with mortise and tenon joinery. The finish consists of several coats of orange shellac to give the wood the amber tone and then I sprayed on several coats of a satin finish waterbased poly. The only metal fasteners in the table are the z-clips that hold the top to the top aprons. The lower table fits into the lower aprons with through tenons. The top has breadboard ends, which are some kind of masochistic exercise in overkill I seem to keep putting myself through, but I think it’s worth it in the end.

“the morris chairs were upset”, that’s funny. Nobody wants to live with a cantankerous morris chair. It all looks very good. Like the QSWO as well. Curious about the breadboard ends. Are they glued all along and if so how come they don’t get stressed with movement?

The breadboard ends are designed to hide endgrain and accommodate wood movement. There is a great description of the technique in “The Complete Illustrated Guide to Furniture & Cabinet Construction” by Andy Rae, but I will try to paraphrase the key points:

The breadboard end involves cutting a long stopped mortise running the length of the end piece and three full tenons cut on the end of the table top with a short tenon that runs almost the entire length of the tabletop. The full tenons are located in the middle and near the outside of each end. You pin and glue the center tenon and glue nothing else, specifically you DO NOT GLUE the outer two tenons. You also make the holes in the outer two tenons elongated so that as the tabletop expands or contracts from wood movement the two pins remain stationary and allow the wood movement without cracking the tenon or the pin. I don’t know if this makes sense unless you’ve done it or seen pictures, so I highly recommend checking out pages 288-289 of Andy Rae’s book. It’s an excellent reference for a lot of things.